


In a Limbo

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 12:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13166976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Typical of Lily. Those apparently haughty phrases, but told in her kind tone, accompanied by that smiled that made it seems like it would’ve actually been okay.Perhaps without knowing that she was the only one to believe it.





	In a Limbo

It was sunny.

Blinding. Pure.

So different from what he felt inside.

His face was tear-stained. He was ashamed of it.

A pansy, as usual. As everybody always pointed out.

_Severus... go out for a walk._

His mother had started to say it more and more often, trying to mask the tears.

She cried too, she who had a right to.

She always hoped her son wouldn’t have noticed, but he had learnt all too soon to catch the signals.

When his mother asked him to leave, from the living room he could hear the banging of empty bottles, mixed with his father’s cursing. And when he came back, his mother always had an expression that seemed carved in stone, under purplish stains of those bruises Severus had experimented himself.

He wasn’t a kid anymore, but he wasn’t a man either, and he was aware of this situation of stasis, of the limbo he was in, that phase of existence where Earth itself seemed to spin slower, together with his actions.

Thoughts only went faster than everything else, and they brought his always to places he wouldn’t have gone to.

To _her_ words, for example.

_“At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out. They fence you in.”_

Typical of Lily. Those apparently haughty phrases, but told in her kind tone, accompanied by that smiled that made it seems like it would’ve actually been okay.

Perhaps without knowing that she was the only one to believe it.

_At some point, you have to make a decision._

He needed to make a decision, Severus.

Choose to fight, to stand against his father, to emerge, or hiding or even run, but still making a decision.

What he hadn’t been able to do.

_In a limbo._

He stayed there, waiting for things to change. Always in vain.

And he thought, thought, thought, without really knowing what to do with himself. And whilst he thought, _her_ words kept invading his mind, without leaving him a chance to forget them.

_“Life it’s messy. That’s how we’re made. So, you can waist your life drawing lines.”_

And it was an accusation, because it was exactly what he had done his entire life. He had put boundaries all around him, some impenetrable lines, so that nobody would’ve been able to cross him, to see what laid behind. A Severus Snape almost human which he had always carefully hid, in the vain hope to protect himself from disappointment, failure, pain.

But there was no escape, or he didn’t hide it good enough.

_You can waist your life drawing lines._

He had almost hated Lily for this.

Because she had every right to say it, because she had a life that couldn’t be wasted, while he was just a useless boy that fought every day to stay afloat, in that house with the walls too thin and narrow, which let out all his and his mother’s suffering.

What life to waste?

What life did he have, as to have to worry about it?

That was no life. It was going on, day by day, hoping to stay unseen, hoping that those walls so difficulty built would’ve bore the weather, the reprimands, the glares, the pain.

There were days where it was okay, and days where those eyes that lingered on him hurt, adding up to his hate toward other people, in an unimaginable way.

Yes, he had almost hated Lily. And then he had remembered she knew nothing about him.

Or, perhaps, she knew it all.

_“Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross.”_

Too dangerous.

And she couldn’t see that while she tried to make him feel better, while she tried to find a way out for him from that horrible situation... everytime she saw that look on his face, she tried.

And more than appreciating her efforts, Severus couldn’t do. Nor he could tell her that there was no such thing as a way out, he couldn’t tell her that her words were thrown away.

He couldn’t tell her he wasn’t going to escape, for he had nowhere to go.

_There are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross._

There were boundaries that couldn’t be crossed, and he had given up on it. That was the role he would’ve played for the rest of his life, running away from time to time, but always coming back home in the end, always pretending he couldn’t see and he couldn’t hear.

There were boundaries that couldn’t be crossed, those boundaries he wouldn’t have let even Lily in, for she would’ve seen there was nothing to be saved in him, no matter how much she could talk or advice.

And he didn’t want her to see.

If that was to happen, she would’ve ended up in the infinite number of things he had lost.

_“Here’s what I know: if you’re willing to throw caution to the wind and take a chance, the view from the other side... is spectacular.”_

Spectacular.

_Spectacular._

But he wasn’t going to find out, for there was no life on the other side for him.

And he wouldn’t have risked to throw himself in the emptiness, to rebel to that existence, without the certainty that at the end of that darkness there was actually a light to finally bring him some peace.

_The view from the other side... is spectacular._

It was a lie, but he wasn’t going to tell her.

He had no obligation toward himself, because he was just a useless kid without a reason to tear down the boundaries he had built.

He had no obligation toward his own life.

That life which had cast him away in a place forgotten by man.

In a limbo.

 


End file.
